Technology

Carla Wilby and Thalia Pillay

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than half of all mobile money accounts, and in 2024, the continent handled around 74% of all mobile money transactions worldwide. These numbers underscore how, in markets where access to traditional banking remains limited, mobile money has bridged the gap between the banked and unbanked. The market was also ripe for fraud.

Thalia Pillay and Carla Wilby co-founded real-time fraud intelligence platform Orca Fraud in 2024. They were both working at Cape Town fintech Stitch, when they realised that traditional fraud systems weren’t keeping pace with evolving scams, particularly in mobile-first markets. “When I looked into the fraud issues we were experiencing, I quickly realised that there were a lot of great tools in the market that were built for Western markets, but weren’t really a good fit for the alternative payment methods used across Africa,” says Pillay. Fraud on the continent, such as SIM swaps, social engineering, and account takeovers, is distinct to fraud elsewhere. This is partly because the rapid growth of mobile money outpaced regulatory and technical defences, and users often lacked the digital literacy to recognise common fraud warning signs.